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Show deaths, my parents will send back the lava they took from their last trip to the Big Island. hey will mail it to Volcano National Park without a return address, and it will arrive with thousands of other unmarked packages contaii I never doubted the curse. Years from now, on my fourth grade trip to the Big Island, I will make sure to brush my shoes well before getting back on the bus after our visit to Black Sands Beach. When we walk the wooden sidewalk known as "Devastation Trail" that takes visitors through a lunar-like landscape of volcanic destruction, my feet n£y.er leave the boards. Even as a child, I saw no reason to tempt fate. I had seen what Pele/could do, rivers of Pahoehoe lava flooding what used to be a forest, fountains of fire reaching high in the night sky, walls of' A'a lava consuming wooden shelters. I had seen her fire consume my family. The summer my brother almost drowned as I swam above his body, though, I had no lava to return, no gods to appease, nothing that could be shipped across the ocean parcel post. 73 |